After chase and crash, local authorities catch escaped Georgia inmate in stolen truck
After a car chase ended with pursuers ramming a stolen truck to crash it, an escaped Georgia prison inmate was captured Monday night in Phenix City, authorities said.
Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor said the escapee, Robert Edward Jenkins, had taken a pickup truck from a prison work detail in Forsyth, Georgia, and driven it to Columbus, where he is from.
Authorities on the lookout for Jenkins spotted the truck here and started chasing it as Jenkins crossed the 13th Street bridge into Phenix City, sped north on Summerville Road and then turned onto U.S. Highway 80, also known as the J.R. Allen Parkway, Taylor said.
He was near Riverchase Drive about 11:15 p.m. when a Russell County deputy used what’s called a “precision immobilization technique,” or PIT maneuver, to ram the stolen truck to make it wreck, Taylor said. Jenkins was injured in the ensuing crash and hospitalized for treatment, the sheriff said.
The escape
According to the Macon Telegraph, Jenkins, 42, was assigned to a work crew with the city of Forsyth, having been held at Monroe County’s medium-security Burrus Correctional Training Center since May 19. He was serving a three-year sentence for distributing marijuana, his fourth prison stint since 1999, the newspaper reported.
Monroe Sheriff Brad Freeman said Jenkins left his job site at a city building on Georgia Highway 83 about 11:30 a.m., and was last seen in a white Ford F-150 pickup with City of Forsyth emblems.
Because Jenkins had ties to Columbus and Phenix City, the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office was warned of the escape, Sheriff Greg Countryman wrote on a Facebook post. His officers along with U.S. Marshals were on the lookout for the vehicle when a deputy in a marked patrol car saw it at Second Avenue and 35th Street, and tried to pull it over, Countryman wrote.
Jenkins refused to stop and sped away, traveling down Second Avenue to 13th Street before turning west across the bridge into Alabama, Countryman said.
Freeman, the Monroe County Sheriff, told the Ledger-Enquirer a U.S. Marshal’s fugitive squad started hunting Jenkins in Columbus shortly after his escape, talking to friends and relatives who might have seen him and learning he was in the area.
Jenkins’ injuries warranted having an ambulance take him to a trauma center in Columbus, Freeman said. The Georgia Department of Corrections will take him back into custody upon his release from the hospital, the sheriff said.
The city-owned Ford F-150 pickup Jenkins was driving was damaged beyond repair, Freeman said.
This story was originally published September 27, 2022 at 3:08 PM with the headline "After chase and crash, local authorities catch escaped Georgia inmate in stolen truck."